hen he came it was not to see her but her
father, her brother. With a sick shame Nanny thought how the sight of
him, the sound of his voice, the very mention of his name made her
heart fill with warm gladness. She loved him and he had no need of
love--her love. She who had turned men away, men who were--

She rose suddenly. There was a kind of terror in her eyes and she
locked her hands together to warm them, for they had suddenly grown icy
cold.

"I must go," she murmured in real distress.

But he just looked up and put out his hand. And she sat down again and
let her hand rest in his. And half her joy was pure misery. For she
did not understand the ways of this strange, boyish man and she did not
know what the end of such a friendship could be.

When those first angry drops pattered down on the leaves Nanny started
up in alarm and would have raced for home. But he caught her quickly,
slipped her cloak on, and before she had time to protest, they were
running hand in hand down the hillside. Just as the full fury of the
storm struck the house they banged the front door shut and stood
panting and laughing in the hall.

It was very pleasant to sit by his fire and let the storm and the ruddy
flames do the talking. But even as she sat and dreamed Nanny knew it
would never do. Green Valley knew and loved her but that would not
save her. So Nanny walked to the telephone and called up the one soul
it was always safe to tell things to. And twenty minutes later Grandma
Wentworth arrived.

It was while they sat talking in cozy comfort before the snapping fire
that Cynthia's son suggested the attic.

"Mother told me once never to rummage through her old trunks unless
Mary Wentworth was by to explain. So come along."

Grandma looked a little startled at that.

"We'll go," she said. "It's the finest kind of a day to go messing in
an attic. But I'll step into the kitchen first and borrow two all-over
aprons. My dress isn't new but Nan's is."

The old Churchill homestead was built in the days when folks believed
reverently in attics. Not little cubby-holes under the roof but in
generous, well-lighted, nicely-floored affairs that less reverent
generations have turned into smoking dens, studios and ballrooms.

A properly kept attic in the olden days was no dark, musty-smelling,
cobwebby affair. It was as neat in its way as the parlor and a hundred
times more interesting. The parlor was a stiff room with